United Products, Inc. Essay

The study case of united products, Inc. is a great platform to demonstrate many perspectives. In this case study assignment we will focus on the way the company manager, George Brown, chooses to build his company structure, his management philosophy motives for making the company to become successful and planning processes policy in United Products, Inc. (Gareth, 2013) United Products, Inc. was founded by George brown’s Father in 1941 and engaged in the sales and service of basic supply items for shipping and receiving, production and packaging, research and development, and office and warehouse departments. On 1967, before his retirement, the elder Mr. Brown’s recapitalized and restructured his companies, after merging some and disposing of others, he created two main companies which were: UPI and UPS. George Brown inherited UPI which was a small office products and supply company.

Generally, Brown might considered for some to be a laissez-faire company president/owner which is often going out for vacations. (Gareth, 2013) George Brown priorities might consider quite different from other managers, he is budgets to himself a limited time for running the business since he declares himself as a person which reached his goal to be a wealthy man while he was 28 years old, and therefore he doesn’t want much growth because he is unprepared to put forth extra effort. (Jones, 1994) Although many people might judge Brown attitude of running a business, Brown has a good track record as president. His company has grown at an enviable 20 percent a year, and the functional organizational structure works well. In addition, Brown knows how to delegate and decentralize control by letting his employees to take over things while he is away. Moreover, He is letting his employees to demonstrate their abilities, rewards them for good performance, and he creates an enjoyable organizational culture.

His time on vacation or playing golf is a tribute to his management skills and ability to design a structure that allows for delegation. (Bird, Newman, Page, Rose, Mariani, 2012) While counting the strong and weakness points of George Brown, as a business manager/owner, it is easy to see that the main strong points are expressed by decentralizing the operational responsibilities to his general manager, which allows him to focus on planning ahead for the company. In addition, Brown’s, is well known in his aspiration to make his business into a good place for his employees which is friendly place to work in and indeed his colleague testimonials approved it. (Mary, 2011) In the other hand, Brown’s weakness points in management starts with his lack of motivation to allows the company’s growth because of the fact he wasn’t prepared to invest his time in a growing company considering the fact the company is 20 percent growing every year.

Another problem of Brown’s decision is the fact he is not making a separation of duties, which means even though the company keeps growing about 20 percent every year, he is still letting his general manager to act as a sales manager and training specialist in addition. Moreover, Brown declares he keep noticing that the planning process is becoming more and more demanding and appears to be his main time consumer and therefore his planning process policy advocates for making a single year forecasting, and no more. (Gareth, 2013) In a case of a growing company, Brown may need to adopt a divisional form of organization. He probably should use a product division structure, and divide up the 3,500 products UPI sells into three or four main product categories.

Thus he may need to increase UPI’s level of differentiation, which will require increased integration and formalization and standardization. (Jones, 1994) After investigating and learning about George Brown management strategy, there are a few lessons that can be taught, management has to use objectives which UPI management didn’t do. The second lesson is the fact that companies’ management should be aware of formal and informal organizational structure, because in some cases formal organizational structure cannot exist. One question still remain without unequivocal answer, Does a poor company’s management can steel bring good results? (Mary, 2011)